


Lakes and Oceans

by Port



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Gen, Multi, Pre-Relationship, Telepathy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-28
Updated: 2017-04-28
Packaged: 2018-10-25 03:26:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10755759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Port/pseuds/Port
Summary: Rey couldn’t help but sigh as the base cleared theFalconfor landing. She didn’t have good news for anyone down there.





	Lakes and Oceans

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AngeNoir](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AngeNoir/gifts).



Rey couldn’t help but sigh as the base cleared the _Falcon_ for landing. She didn’t have good news for anyone down there. Beside her, Chewbacca rumbled reassurance, but he too was clearly annoyed at coming home empty-handed. If she closed her eyes, she could feel his frustration (a red and blue shape, with a spiny texture) directed back toward the planet they had just left, and the man on it.

~~

Leia took in Rey’s report with calm detachment, but her disappointment (deep blue, flat, the consistency of mercury) seemed to line the edges of the room where they met privately as soon as Rey had arrived. Rey did her best to ignore it and to give a detailed report: his mental state, the island where he lived all alone, the reasons he had given. She might have expected anger and resentment--her brother had abandoned her, after all--but the sunset reds and oranges of compassion hovered in a thick aura all about Leia.

~~

The infirmary was like the rest of the base, a sandstorm of efficiency, duty, labor, determination, competence, all swirling around and buffeting her. She found Finn’s bed in a room to one side without help; it was like a tent of quiet, though she could sense a low murmur radiating off him in white lines from his eyes and hands. He was healing, possibly faster than when she had left. Rey sank down in a chair beside him, grateful, as though she had found shelter.

Finn lay on a cushiony, hospital-grade mattress, with blankets up to his chest. His eyes were closed, mouth a little open. Rey found herself gently stroking two fingers down his cheek, just once, to check his temperature. His skin felt clean and warm. The white lines coming from his eyelids and hands and fading into the air intensified at her touch. Rey leaned forward to rest her head in her arms, just touching his shoulders.

“I missed you,” she said. _I missed you, but I’m here now_ , she thought. The murmur emanating from him, a white and grey buzz like bees in a hive, took on a happy humming quality.

She stayed for several hours, talking to him aloud and privately, as though he could hear her. _I don’t know why I did that_ , she confided. _I should have been more patient, not insisted. But all I could think about was his sister here waiting for him to come back._ She sighed and rested her hand over his knuckles, momentarily distracted by the pink cloud that wafted up from his hand when she did. _It feels like I failed, even though Chewbacca and Leia say I did my best._

“Oh, you must be Rey,” came a voice from the door, so startling that Rey shot up to standing without a thought. Doctors and nurses had stopped in from time to time, but this was a man in an orange flight suit, carrying a package wrapped in blue cloth. He had smile lines at his eyes and mouth and a yellow-green sense of ease and friendliness.

“I am,” she finally answered. “What’s your name?”

“Oh, sorry.” He smiled. It was fairly dashing. “I’m Poe Dameron. Finn told me about you, before the attack on Starkiller Base. He was really concerned about you. I was glad when I heard you’d made it out.”

“Thank you,” Rey said, searching her memory. Poe Dameron…. “You’re BB-8’s master, aren’t you?”

“I am. I have to admit, BB-8 is still telling me all about you. I owe you a debt for getting her back to the Resistance.”

Rey wasn’t sure what to do with that much sincere gratefulness, orange and lighter than air. She gestured to a chair up by the wall. “Do you want to sit down?”

~~

Poe became Rey’s regular companion during visits to Finn. She wasn’t usually one for company, but a lot of things had changed in the past few months. Now she spent time with Chewbacca fixing and adjusting things on the _Falcon_ , and time with the pilots and mechanics in the main hangar, where she worked all but one day a week. On that watery planet, Rey had spent weeks with Luke, learning to meditate, and just talking, before she had ruined it and gone back to the Resistance. Her AT-AT on Jakku, where BB-8 had been the only visitor ever, now seemed like a faint memory.

The challenge now was to get time alone. She could do that, escape from the colors and feelings bombarding her in the midst of all those people--commitment, fear, grief, anger, love--by going to the woods, sometimes trekking as far as the lake several miles away. But Finn’s bedside continued to be a shelter of quiet and peace.

And she didn’t mind Poe Dameron sharing that with her. He came by every day he was planetside, often bringing little trinkets to place on the table beside Finn’s bed, or even useful items that Finn would need after waking up. The package in Poe’s hand the day they met? It had contained socks and had gone into a locked cabinet containing more clothing, a hot plate, two datapads loaded with Correllian poetry, and a good cast iron skillet.

Apparently the chair by the head of the bed that Rey had taken that first day was Poe’s usual seat. He was Finn’s most devoted visitor. Rey learned this from snatches of images she caught from the nursing staff: Poe sitting with his feet up on Finn’s mattress, reading a datapad; Poe sitting with his lips tightly pressed together, holding Finn’s hand; Poe asleep in a position that promised to send him to the floor if he moved at all.

When she offered him his usual chair back, though, Poe declined, patting the seat of the second one he had taken from the wall and saying it was even better, and he was getting tired of looking at Finn from that angle anyway. That had startled a laugh from Rey, which made Poe look down and smile without meeting her eyes. His happiness was a shining yellow thing. Rey wondered what her own looked like.

 _I have to tell you_ , she confided to Finn one night, while Poe was off on maneuvers. _I like it here. I feel like I belong. It’s hard to tell anyone, since we’re not here for that, right? We’re here to defeat the First Order and then rebuild the New Republic. But I feel useful and valued, even though I failed to get Luke to return with me. These are good people. I want you to wake up soon and feel that way too._

After a few minutes of thinking, she continued. _Do you think Poe would mind that I can… you know, sense his feelings and some of his thoughts? I haven’t told anyone but you, and I’m not sure it counts since you’re in a coma. No one on Jakku thought it was a good thing, and they’re right. It’s invasive. But it’s only gotten stronger and harder to control since I spent all that time with Luke. I can see everyone’s secrets. They don’t always make sense, and I look away from them as soon as it happens, but it’s like trying to shade your eyes from the sun. I’m fairly certain the Resistance would make me leave if they knew._

She was silent for a long time before thinking, with dread in her stomach, _Poe really would mind, wouldn’t he?_

And then Finn did something unexpected; he answered her without opening his eyes or his mouth. _Poe’s a better man than that, Rey. I think once you’re his friend, you’re stuck with him._

Not even Luke had ever spoken to her in her mind before, and she had not expected that Finn was even in a state to understand the words she sent to him, much less reply in kind.

“Finn!” she exclaimed aloud, startled and delighted.

Finn blinked open his eyes, and his fingers flexed in her hand. A machine across the room began beeping an alert in Binary, announcing that the patient had finally woken.

~~

Rey lay awake in her bunk in the dark, talking with Finn, who was still confined to the infirmary.

 _Does this mean I’m a Jedi?_ Finn asked. _Are you a Jedi?_

_You become a Jedi after training, I know that much. But you must be Force-sensitive to be able to speak with me. I don’t think anyone else would be able to._

_Force-sensitive. Wow. How long was I sleeping? I feel incredibly stiff._

_About four months_ , Rey answered. _The nurses helped you do physical therapy, but I imagine that was only so effective. Finn…. What you said about Poe. Did you really mean it?_

Finn took his time before replying. He projected a reflective silence. 

~~

The ocean on Luke’s planet had had a sort of roiling chaos to it, but the lake by the base on D’Qar only washed gently against the sandy shore. Rey had a ridiculous urge to wade in and swim, despite not knowing how.

“I know how,” Finn told her, catching her thought. He was sprawled on a bright yellow blanket in the grass and had been reading them lines of poetry from his datapad. “Want me to teach you?”

Poe looked up from where he was sunbathing on the same blanket. “Thinking about taking a swim?” he asked Rey.

Rey considered the lake some more, then nodded. “Yes, I think so.”


End file.
